Messaging service relates to a mobile data service in terms of messages such as person to person, or person to group online messages. A messaging communication system, besides being capable of basic information interaction, should provide users with enhanced service experiences. For example, during a messaging service being used by a user, messages sent or received by the user may be stored uniformly as history messages. Moreover, media contents sent or received by the user during the usage of the messaging service may be stored respectively. Thereafter, the user is allowed to optionally manage the messages and the media contents stored in a uniform storage. Or, the user is allowed to upload media contents that are valuable for himself into a storage at network side.
Instant Messaging (IM) service supports a conversation history service function and an offline message storage function, and provides network storage for messages transceived among multiparty users participating in a conversation. Each user subscribing to the messaging service may have a network backup corresponding to a conversation history record of himself, wherein the network backup includes conversation history messages and conversation history metadata. The conversation history messages record all messages transceived during the conversation among multiparty users participating in the conversation, and serve as a main carrier for conversation history information, to allow the users to retrieve interested contents therein after the conversation. The conversation history metadata exists as history function management information, and is a structural content defined by a messaging service provider, which may be deemed as an abstract of conversation history records.
Converged IP Messaging (CPM) service supports a uniform storage function. The uniform storage for the service may include the following aspects: conversation history messages are stored for a user according to a configuration set by the user or an operator, so that each user subscribing to the messaging service may have a network backup corresponding to his conversation history record; the user may retrieve interested contents by searching with some keywords when the user is interested in the messages or the media contents therein; the user may also store his interested media contents separately. The media contents may come from messages, or may be updated to a uniform storage device by the user himself.
Related standards for specifying the uniform storage function in the messaging service are developed by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) standards organization. As shown in FIG. 1, according to the current standard specifications, uniform storage function components are distributed in a Messaging Server (MS) 150 and an Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Management Server (XDMS) 140, and provide User Agent (UA) 110 of the messaging service with the uniform storage service function via an Aggregation Proxy (AP) and a Search Proxy (SP).
FIG. 2 is a block diagram for uniformly storing conversation messages or offline messages among the users as offline messages or conversation metadata according to the messaging system illustrated in FIG. 1. The conversation metadata includes conversation history lists. Each conversation history list includes size, expiry time, subject, history message (pager or conference), conversation starting time (date), and storage path (history reference).
According to the current technical solutions of conversation history and offline message, capacity of storing history messages and offline messages during the conversation is provided therein, which may satisfy a basic requirement for storing conversation history records for users, or storing other history messages using the method for storing offline messages. However, this solution merely stores general metadata, such as a starting and expiry time of the conversation, a subject of the conversation, etc., or stores related information of the offline messages; whereas, metadata for specific conversation messages or metadata for related media contents during the conversation is not included, such as media data, size, type, etc., and the metadata for related media contents in the messages is not included in the offline messages. Therefore, the current technical solution of uniform storage limits users from the capability of searching media contents or managing media contents in the history messages in the future. As a result, the user may not voluntarily obtain interested messages or media contents directly from the uniform storage device. The basic reason lies in that the network storage for the conversation history and offline messages is devoid of necessary metadata information of the media contents according to the current uniform storage solution.
In summary, although the current messaging solution provides the capacity for storing history messages, inventors find out that there lies at least following problems in the conventional art. The processing for the stored message metadata is not detailed enough to provide information of the media contents in the messages such as storage location, size, subject, etc. Thus, the current solution can not satisfy the need of users to separately store or upload the media contents into a uniform storage entity, and can hardly further satisfy the need of users to manage the media contents in the history messages on such basis.